Thursday, May 06, 2010

Staple that

Tariana Turia's big talk of a one billion dollar Whanau Ora program has turned out to be a lot less ambitious for Maori, with a budget of $134 million over four years, which works out at about a billion dollars spread out over a hundred years. Most of the spending is just renamed  existing spending anyway. Between this and the tobacco tax (I mean, what other constituency would agree to three 10 percent hikes in taxes voluntarily?) I really wonder how much backbone the Maori Party really has. How's that leadership renewal process going?